A call center is a facility for receiving and/or placing large volumes of telephone calls. The calls are received and placed by call servers, such as a combination of human agents with communication devices or automatic response units. Such call centers typically include an automatic call distributor or a private branch exchange for assigning each incoming call to a call server. A call server typically includes a telephone component and a workstation component to assist a human call agent. During the process of serving an original incoming telephone call, the call server may retrieve or originate an electronic data record related to the incoming call. The electronic data record is originated or retrieved and stored via a computer system which does not share the same communication path as the original incoming call.
In the course of servicing telephone calls, a first call server of a first call center may transfer an original incoming call to a second call server of a distant, separate second call center in which the call servers of the second call center may possess a specialty which may assist in serving the original incoming call. To increase service efficiency, the second call server should be able to quickly and automatically access the same data record originated or retrieved by the first call server for the original incoming call.
For automatic access, the second call server must automatically receive identification of the data record. The prior art which provides such identification uses either the identification of the calling party generally referred to as Caller ID to identify the specific call instance, or systems which send the data record identification in the telephone call itself using User to User Information (UUI), or systems which depend on some global identifier maintained by the telephone switching system. However, these prior art methods and systems can provide data record identification only on a limited basis because the methods and systems are not universally available and are not dependable.
The Caller ID approach is not universally available because many telephone systems do not have Caller ID, many systems use outbound only trunks which do not have a telephone number, many generating telephone systems do not provide for the inclusion of Caller ID, Caller ID is not uniformly passed between calling systems such as from long distance carriers to a local telephone network, many times Caller ID is only passed when the Signaling System #7 (SS7) method is used to deliver telephone calls within the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), and many times Caller ID is only passed when special circuits like Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) are used. The Caller ID approach is also not dependable because many times the Caller ID is not unique to the caller and thus to a data record for the caller, but is rather a pilot number for an entire organization, a billing number, or is generated arbitrarily by the originating telephone system.
The UUI can only be communicated if ISDN circuits are used at both the source and destination. A great many networks are not ISDN and not all ISDN networks provide UUI. Also, UUI requires SS7 which is not universally available. Finally, in most cases the call center interfaces which are between the telephone network and the electronic based application used by the call server do not pass UUI in either direction.
Global identifiers are not maintained by many telephone systems and are not normally passed between telephone switches. If the switches do pass the global identifiers, they must be homogeneous having the same architecture or else they will not maintain the global identifiers. Also, in call center interfaces which do provide global identifiers, the software used only works with particular switches and networks.
Thus, the prior art systems and methods for providing data record identification to allow for automatic access of an associated electronic data record by a call server handling a call transferred from another call center are too often either not available or not sufficiently reliable. Based on the disadvantages of the prior art, a system and method are needed which would be nearly universally available and would reliably provide electronic data record identification to allow for automatic access of data records associated with transferred telephone calls.